Who will be there with you at the very worst times of your life? What family member, what human acquaintance, what friend?

Before you can answer that, it might help to have an idea what might qualify as the worst times. It’s worth exploring. You might be surprised.

Your toughest times will swirl around death. Or abandonment. Or disappointment or betrayal. Sometimes your toughest times may be about brokenness. Sometimes they involve somebody else’s toughest times.

I remember an occasion when a member of my family suffered an unbelievable loss. I dreaded the idea of

Clayton Hardimantalking with him. I knew I couldn’t fix his suffering. I didn’t know what to do or say. I felt completely incapable of living up to the task. I spent hours avoiding him or at least being alone with him.

Until the time came when the moment could not be put off anymore. Finally we were together, and we had the talk we were meant to have. And I realized it wasn’t my duty to fix it so he didn’t have to suffer. My duty was to fix it so he didn’t have to suffer alone.

How long ago that seems now. How young and silly I must have been.

My wife and I were talking about this. It was not so much an exploration as a kind of gentle probing. The odd thing was that as we wondered about each other’s toughest times, we wound up talking about the same tough time. Except she described it from one perspective, and I described it from another. It was as if in our musings we had stumbled across the same place, same moment and same event, but we had entered simultaneously from opposite ends of the room.

It was the Rev. Maurice Moyer that got me thinking about all this.

If you’re wondering who Maurice Moyer is, it may be helpful to think of him as one of the largest civil rights figures you’ve never heard of.

Moyer was one of the peripheral giants of history. That means he toiled in near anonymity. If you notice him at all, it was probably through a glimpse from the corner of an eye. That means he was deemed important in a kind of secondhand way, for things he did in conjunction with other, significant figures. He was one of those people who was praised for marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He took part in the historic march on Washington. He participated in the dangerous march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.

And for decades, he did quiet work as a pastoral leader and civil rights activist in the Wilmington, Del., area, where he helped change more than just the landscape.

Sometimes that meant putting his own health and safety at risk. He occupied stools at segregated lunch counters until police hauled him off. He visited the hospital room of a beaten colleague when others in the city were keeping a healthy distance.

These details surface in a profile written by Beth Miller for the News-Journal in Delaware. But what especially caught my attention was Miller’s observation that Moyer “stood beside many at the worst times of their lives.”

To take such a stand at the very worst times? Who does that? Isn’t that the signal that usually sends people running off in waves?

To be fair, most likely there are other Moyers like this one. I’m sure they exist in towns across the country. But they often sail innocently under the radar, unless disaster catches hold of them or until death catches up with them, as it did Moyer in Delaware.

He died this past week. He was 93. His long hard struggle is done.

But his example is not. Moyer is a reminder of what support ultimately means. It’s easy to stand with someone in a moment of triumph. It’s harder to stand shoulder to shoulder with them when the wind gusts and turns, hitting them square in the face.